Increasing Europeanization which entails the changing of social values towards more sustainability, freedom and participation confronts companies with a huge challenge. The banking sector, in particular, has had to deal with the impact of the financial crisis, which has had a devastating impact on its image, destroying employee and customer trust in its code of values. In this context, the legal obligation of the European Union to publish a Sustainability Report from 2016 on is a tremendous challenge. At the same time the sector is suffering from low interest rates and has to redefine its business models and restructure its companies. However, the sustainability report could be used to initiate a value-based transition in order to obtain greater attraction.

At first sight, transition and organizational learning seem to have been researched extensively (e.g. Göhlich & Tippelt 2008). The discourse, however, deals with organizational learning (e.g. Engel & Sausele-Bayer 2014), the need for innovation and the capacity to change (e.g. Weber & Göhlich 2014) and the development of strategies and processes for this change (Schiermann & Thiel 2014). An analysis of these studies, however, shows that leadership, participation and learning from experience are the main triggers for organizational and personnel learning (Göhlich & Weber et al. 2009; 2013; Sausele-Bayer). Hence, with regard to the question as to how sustainability should be implemented in a company, there is a discourse, primarily in business administration that has mainly developed in ethical business and ethical management, e.g. the implementation of sustainability (e.g. Weber 2008), theories and models of eco-efficiency (e.g. von Weizsäcker 2010) and eco-effectiveness, (e.g. Braungart & Mc Donough 2011) and sector-specific approaches (e.g. Bretzke 2014 for logistics).  Rarely in the academic discourse the relation between sustainability and organizational learning is discussed (Lülfs 2013). Moreover, there is a gap between the huge conceptual debate on change management and the implementation of sustainability and a lack of its educational implementations.

At this point, the empirical enquiry presented here analyses the bank’s concept and its three years of experience with the value-based transition from the classical business model of a cooperative bank toward a value-based sustainable bank. The study aims at working out the implications from educational research on the connection between organizational; personal and personnel learning in a company in transition. Relevant questions are: How has the value-based transition been conceived and implemented? Which role do communication, participation and leadership play? Which challenges does the value-based transition have for organizational, personal and personnel development?

First of all the design, the methodological approach and the theoretical framework of the study are dealt with in the introduction and this is followed by a presentation of the findings of the empirical study that are then discussed from the perspective of organizational learning and include such questions as: Which instruments and practices have been successful measures in supporting the value-based transition? Where did problems arise and how could they be solved? In the course of the discussion theoretical implications for organizational and personal development in a value-based transition will be identified and examined. Finally, the outcome will be synthesized and some cornerstones for an educational theory of value-based transition will be illustrated.

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